Piano construction is by now a rather conservative area; most of the technological advances were made by about 1900, and indeed it is possible that some contemporary piano buyers might actually be suspicious of pianos that are made differently from the older kind. Yet piano manufacturers, especially the smaller ones, are still experimenting with ways to build better pianos.
In the early 21st century, the obvious way to raise the technological level of any mechanical device is to use digital technology to control it (compare the mid 19th century, where the obvious route was to make some of its parts from steel; e.g. piano strings). Of course, digital technology has been incorporated into pianos, and this innovation is discussed below. But in a sense, it is a far greater challenge to improve the piano in its own terms, as a mechanical/acoustic device. This challenge pits the modern piano designer against some of the finest engineering minds of the nineteenth century, an era when pianos represented some of the most sophisticated of all technological achievements. Nineteenth-century piano innovation was, moreover, financed by a far more robust piano market than exists today.
A final issue is that the modern concert grand, 19th-century technology though it is, already sounds very good indeed in the opinion of many listeners[who?] (that is, when it is made by the finest makers and skillfully adjusted and tuned). Any innovative piano must therefore compete in the market of musical taste against formidable existing pianos.
The discussion below is organized according to some innovative contemporary piano manufacturers and the inventions with which they are associated. The Web sites of these manufacturers appear at the end.
For clarification of the various parts of the piano mentioned below, see the Wikipedia article piano.
Acoustic and mechanical innovations
Actions
The Fandrich & Sons piano company of Stanwood, Washington was set up to produce pianos with the "Fandrich vertical action", a new kind of piano action developed by Darrell Fandrich and Chris Trivelas. It is intended to provide the same sensitivity of touch to upright pianos that is available in grands. Currently, Fandrich and Sons installs the Fandrich action in pianos made by the Bohemia firm, in the Czech Republic.
The Fazioli piano company of Sacile, Italy, is now selling pianos with two (or more) actions. The idea is that different actions can be regulated and voiced according to the requirements of particular players or musical styles. Since piano actions are built as a single unit, they can be removed or inserted with just a few minutes' work.
The Magnetic Balanced Action system, invented by Evert Snel and Hans Velo in the Netherlands, permits variable touch according to the player's preference. The idea of the system is to use the force of magnets, whose position is adjustable, to regulate the touch-weight of the keys, rather than fixed weights. This system is now a factory option on Fazioli and Petrof pianos, and can be custom installed on other pianos.
The Kawai Piano company of Japan has in recent years created an action out of an ABS styran/carbon composite. There are no independent reviews of this method.
The Wessel, Nickel and Gross company makes custom actions for grand pianos (and uprights) that are also epoxy carbon fiber. Unlike Kawai, WNG uses composite material for the hammer shank also.
Bridge agraffes
The Stuart and Sons piano company of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, makes a piano in which there are bridge agraffes. Agraffes are a kind of sturdy metal clip that hold the strings in place. They were invented in 1808 by the piano pioneer Sébastien Érard and have long been employed in quality pianos to terminate the front (i.e., closer to the player) end of the string. The Stuart and Sons Agraffe device is used to couple the strings to the bridge and soundboard structure. The agraffe defines the string's speaking length (frequency), containing the reaction forces produced by bending the strings as they pass through it. This mechanism negates the need for string down bearing that is required in the traditional pinned bridge system. This method, scientifically proven, ensures a more efficient transmission of sound from the strings to the soundboard, able to make the strings vibrate in a more controlled way, improving the dynamics and ensuring a more successful support.[citation needed]
The American company Sohmer, along with Blüthner in Europe, among others, applied this idea to the string termination on the bridge in pianos beginning in the 1890s, where bridge pins are ordinarily used. Most applications of agraffes have been located at the near end of the strings, close to the tuning pins. Stuart has reintroduced the use of agraffes on the bridges (of which their pianos have two).
It is claimed that bridge agraffes permit efficient transmission of sound from the strings to the soundboard, resulting in a very well-sustained tone. Similar results are noted with the brass agraffe used by Sohmer into the 1930s.
Since the strings do not need to bear down heavily on the bridges (a force of 600 to 1200 pounds = 2.7 to 5.4 kN in conventional pianos), bridge agraffes may also help preserve the crucial upward curve, or "crown," in the soundboard.
The Phoenix Piano of the UK also uses a specially designed bridge agraffe to greatly reduce the force exerted on the soundboard, and allowing it to be made of carbon fiber composite instead of wood.
Soundboards of different materials
The soundboard needs to meet two conflicting requirements. First of all, there must be sufficient transmission of vibratory energy from the string to the soundboard that our ears are ultimately provided with a sound of satisfactory loudness. If the soundboard were a plate of steel 4cm thick instead of a wooden board about 1cm thick, its wave impedance would be increased several hundredfold and we would hear almost nothing from the soundboard, nor would the string produce much sound directly in the air. If on the other hand the disturbance excited on the string by the hammer were communicated to the soundboard at too rapid a rate, these vibrations would die down so quickly that we would hear little more than a tuned thud, a louder version of what is produced by hitting a note while a wadded handkerchief is firmly pressed against the vibrating part of the string next to the bridge. We also want the soundboard impedance to be high enough that its resonances will not play an unacceptably large role in the tuning of individual string modes.[1]
The Phoenix Piano of the UK has experimented with soundboard made of carbon fiber composite, which they claim can be made with better sounding qualities than wood, and without the swelling, shrinking and cracking that do affect wood. Phoenix Piano has now for sale pianos with carbon fiber composite soundboard, built by Steingraeber & Sohne.
Larger soundboards
The Astin-Weight piano company of Salt Lake City, Utah, introduced two related innovations to the upright piano which were designed and patented by Edwin R. Astin Sr. Their purpose was to obtain the largest possible soundboard, and indeed, Astin-Weight soundboards cover the entire rear surface of the piano. This is made possible by placing the pinblock forward of the soundboard, and using a peripheral metal frame instead of back posts. The Astin-Weight piano is said to produce a very rich tone, not to every listener's taste but greatly prized by Astin-Weight owners.[2]
Extended keyboards
Almost every modern piano has 36 black keys and 52 white keys for a total of 88 keys (seven octaves plus a minor third, from A0 to C8). Most makers standardized around the 88 key format during the 1880s and 1890s. Many older pianos only have 85 keys (seven octaves from A0 to A7), while some manufacturers extend the range further in one or both directions.
Henri Pape experimented with an eight-octave (F-to-F) keyboard range in the mid 1840s.
Former French maker Erard (known for inventing the double escapement principle still used in grand actions today) added two extra keys at the low end (i.e., G instead of A) on some concert grands as far back as 1877, for a total of 90 keys.[3]
Some Bösendorfer pianos extend the normal range downwards to F0 (models 213, 225 and 275) with one other model (290) going as far as a bottom C0, making a full eight-octave range. These extra keys are sometimes hidden under a small hinged lid that can be flipped down to cover the keys in order to avoid visual disorientation in a pianist unfamiliar with the extended keyboard. On others, the colours of the extra white keys are reversed (black instead of white).
The Stuart and Sons company manufactures extended-range pianos, with all of their pianos having 97 or 102 keys, and now 108. On their instruments, the note range extends from F0 or C0 to F8, a full eight or eight and a half octaves. The extra keys are the same as the other keys in appearance. Stuart and Sons introduced a 108 key piano in 2018, extending the upper range to B8.[4][5]
The pedal piano is a piano with both a manual keyboard and a pedal keyboard (or pedalboard). The pedalboard either plays the same piano as the manual keyboard or has its own dedicated piano.
In its modern 21st-century incarnation the pedal piano takes on two forms, namely the Borgato double piano, a dedicated installation of two grand pianos, one on the top of the other, of which the lower one is played with the pedalboard of the system;[7] and the Pinchi Pedal System which is designed to connect any two standard grand pianos, of which the lower one is played with a pedalboard which acts on the standard grand piano manual keyboard of the lower piano through the Pinchi Pedal System.
The Doppio Borgato
The Borgato workshop, in Sossano, Italy, has produced the Doppio Borgato, a large double piano with pedal board, as on an organ. The bass piano, operated by the pedals, sits under the main piano, and the damper pedals of the two are coupled. This instrument permits the performance of a variety of works written by classical composers for pedal piano.
Pinchi Pedalpiano System - detail
On April 27, 2012, the Pinchi Pedalpiano System, designed by Italian organ builder Claudio Pinchi and Italian pianist Roberto Prosseda, and built by the organ building enterprise Fratelli Pinchi Ars Organi. The Fratelli Pinchi siblings are Andrea, Claudio and Barbara Pinchi. As of June 2013, the Fratelli Pinchi Ars Organi website does not provide any information regarding the Pinchi Pedalpiano System. It is a pedalboard which works with any two standard 88-key grand pianos.[8] The Pinchi pedalboard has 37 pedals (from A to A three octaves up) but the Pinchi Pedalpiano System has a total range of five octaves, thanks to 61 wooden "fingers", as can be seen in the adjacent picture,[9] which play, that is depress, the lower 61 keys (A0 to A5) of the lower piano, and which "fingers" are mapped to the 37 note pedalboard in three independent three octave stops[10] (A0–A3 for 16', A1–A4 for 8', and A2–A5 for 4').[11][12][13]
Aliquot stringing is the use of extra unstruck strings in the piano for the purpose of enriching the tone. The aliquot stringing system was invented by Julius Blüthner in 1873. As currently implemented, the Blüthner aliquot stringing system uses a fourth string in each note of the top three octaves. This string is raised slightly with respect to the other three strings, so that it is not struck by the hammer. Whenever the hammer strikes the three conventional strings, the aliquot string vibrates sympathetically, adding to the complexity of the tone. This same string resonance effect occurs, on a more limited scale, when other notes on the piano are played that are harmonically related to the pitch of an aliquot string.
Tunable duplex scaling
Both Fazioli and Mason and Hamlin (of Haverhill, Massachusetts) employ tunable duplex scaling. The idea behind duplex scaling, invented by Theodore Steinway in 1872, is that the non-speaking portion of the string, located between the non-speaking bridge pin and the hitch pin (formerly considered the "waste end" and damped with a strip of cloth), resounds in sympathy with the vibrating portion of the string. Steinway & Sons' earliest employment of the duplex scale made use of aliquots, individually positionable (hence tunable) contact points, where each note of the duplex scale bears a perfect harmonic, intervallic relationship to its speaking length, i.e., an octave or fifth whether doubled or tripled. Because it was time-consuming to correctly position each aliquot, Steinway abandoned individual aliquots for continuous cast metal bars, each comprising an entire section of duplex bridge points. Their feeling was that with an accurately templated bridge and carefully located duplex bar, the same result would be achieved with far less fuss.
Mason & Hamlin, however, embraced Theodore Steinway's original idea. They felt that the tuning of these short stretches of free string can be achieved with greater accuracy than can be attained with a duplex bar. With the fixed points of a duplex bar, small variations in casting are liable to produce imperfections in the duplex string lengths. Furthermore, since variations in humidity can cause duplex scales to move in pitch more rapidly than the speaking scale, manual readjustment of the string tension on the non-speaking side of the bridge, and/or a readjustment of the duplex position to better accommodate humidity fluctuation, is feasible with individual aliquots.[citation needed]
More recently, Fazioli has modified Theodore Steinway's original idea by creating a stainless-steel track, fixed to the cast iron plate, on which aliquots slide. This system improves the ease with which aliquots can be adjusted, both during manufacture and during subsequent service.[citation needed]
Four strings per note
Borgato pianos also feature four strings per note in the treble section. The fourth string is actually struck, and is not an aliquot string as in Blüthner pianos. This practice has been seen at various times in the history of the piano: an early example was given by Conrad Graf to Ludwig van Beethoven, and later examples are seen ca. 1900 (Luis Casali, Barcelona)[14] and 1940 (August Förster).[15]
Size
Fazioli has also made bold efforts in increasing the sheer size of the piano: their model F308 is the largest regular production piano currently built, being 10feet 2inches (3.10m) long and one and a half times as heavy as the popular Steinway model D.[16]
The Rubenstein R-371 is a custom built piano that is 12 feet 2inches long (3.71 m), weighs 2,500lb (1,100kg), and features a jig-welded steel plate.
Steinbuhler & Company [17] produce keyboards that are 7/8 and 15/16 normal size. The keyboards were designed to make it possible for players with smaller hands to play a larger range of music. The company sells keyboard inserts for Grand pianos and complete upright pianos with smaller (7/8) keyboards.
The Modell 370i, built by David Klavins, is a custom 88-key upright piano permanently installed at the University of Tübingen in Germany. The number 370 refers to the number of centimeters of the height of the piano (12 feet), while the i stands for "integrated" (into a building, as opposed to free-standing). The keyboard and action are situated near the top of the piano. In order to play the instrument, a performer must climb a flight of stairs to an elevated platform and walk around to sit down in front of the piano. The entire piano weighs two thousand pounds. The frame and soundboard of the piano are supported by two vertical beams of steel, and the fully exposed soundboard has over twice the area of the Steinway Model D. The lowest bass string (A0) is only 3mm thick, and its speaking length is 9.94 feet. Klavins is also planning the installation of a Modell 450i, which will be nearly 15 feet tall and include 102 notes, from a low C0 (like the Bösendorfer Imperial 290) to F8, five notes above the highest C on most pianos.[18]
Adrian Mann of New Zealand started on a project of building a 5.7m (18.7ft) long piano when he was aged 16. Known as the Alexander piano, it has been played by many artists.[19]
Pianos of unusual appearance
The Pegasus piano, made by the Schimmel firm.
The Schimmel piano company has made experiments with the appearance of the piano. These include a grand piano whose rim, lid, and other case parts are made of acrylic glass. The acoustic properties of the material used are claimed to be excellent. However, the somewhat lurid appearance of the acrylic piano, as well as its high cost, have kept it a novelty item. Schimmel has also teamed up with artists Otmar Alt and Luigi Colani to produce other pianos of unconventional appearance, including a glass piano.
In 1988, Steinway & Sons created a special version of its model D concert grand to commemorate the company's 135th anniversary. This piano bears serial number 500,000.[20]
Digital innovations
Digital technology makes possible a vastly more sensitive and flexible version of the old player piano; for instance, the modern digital player piano can record as well as play. These pianos are often called 'hybrid pianos', as they have characteristics of both acoustic pianos (the piano sound is made by hammers on strings) and digital pianos (record/playback capability, as well as synthesizer and audio sound capability). Currently, five major manufacturers compete in this market; see links below.
Further afield, the stringless electronic keyboard and digital piano continue to make progress. Especially useful for the musician playing popular music, their portability and range of synthesized sounds has made them popular.
See also
Disklavier, a line of acoustic pianos from Yamaha Corporation augmented with digital performance capture, recording, and reproduction features.
↑ In the Borgato system the lower piano, however, is not a full standard piano: it only has a range of 3 octaves
↑ The Pinchi system does not fit pianos with extended keyboards, like the Bösendorfer or the Stuart & Sons, which have keys going down to F0 or C0.
↑ Actually in the picture only the row of 25 chromatic "fingers" which play the 25 black keys of the 5 octaves can be fully seen. Of the row of 36 diatonic "fingers" which play the 36 white keys of those 5 octaves and which is positioned underneath the row of chromatic "fingers" only the highest three "fingers" can be seen.
↑ That is one can play any combination of stops. Besides the individual stops 16', 8' and 4' one can double in octaves with 16' + 8' and 8' + 4', double in fifteenths (double octaves) with 16' + 4' and treble in octaves with 16' + 8' + 4'
The clavichord is a stringed rectangular keyboard instrument that was used largely in the Late Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was mostly used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition, not being loud enough for larger performances. The clavichord produces sound by striking brass or iron strings with small metal blades called tangents. Vibrations are transmitted through the bridge(s) to the soundboard.
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute.
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine, plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or, on electric and electronic keyboards, completing a circuit. Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard.
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700.
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway, is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in Manhattan by German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg. The company's growth led to the opening of a factory in New York City, United States, and later a factory in Hamburg, Germany. The factory in the Queens borough of New York City supplies the Americas, and the factory in Hamburg supplies the rest of the world.
An electric piano is a musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of a piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations which are converted into electrical signals by magnetic pickups, which are then connected to an instrument amplifier and loudspeaker to make a sound loud enough for the performer and audience to hear. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument. Instead, it is an electro-mechanical instrument. Some early electric pianos used lengths of wire to produce the tone, like a traditional piano. Smaller electric pianos used short slivers of steel to produce the tone. The earliest electric pianos were invented in the late 1920s; the 1929 Neo-Bechstein electric grand piano was among the first. Probably the earliest stringless model was Lloyd Loar's Vivi-Tone Clavier. A few other noteworthy producers of electric pianos include Baldwin Piano and Organ Company and the Wurlitzer Company.
Aliquot stringing is the use of extra, un-struck strings in the piano for the purpose of enriching the tone. Aliquot systems use an additional string in each note of the top three piano octaves. This string is positioned slightly above the other three strings so that it is not struck by the hammer. Whenever the hammer strikes the three conventional strings, the aliquot string vibrates sympathetically. Aliquot stringing broadens the vibrational energy throughout the instrument, and creates an unusually complex and colorful tone.
Julius Blüthner Pianofortefabrik GmbH, is a piano-manufacturing company in Leipzig, Germany.
Piano tuning is the act of adjusting the tension of the strings of an acoustic piano so that the musical intervals between strings are in tune. The meaning of the term 'in tune', in the context of piano tuning, is not simply a particular fixed set of pitches. Fine piano tuning requires an assessment of the vibration interaction among notes, which is different for every piano, thus in practice requiring slightly different pitches from any theoretical standard. Pianos are usually tuned to a modified version of the system called equal temperament.
A pedalboard is a keyboard played with the feet that is usually used to produce the low-pitched bass line of a piece of music. A pedalboard has long, narrow lever-style keys laid out in the same semitone scalar pattern as a manual keyboard, with longer keys for C, D, E, F, G, A and B, and shorter, raised keys for C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯ and A♯. Training in pedal technique is part of standard organ pedagogy in church music and art music.
A manual is a musical keyboard designed to be played with the hands, on an instrument such as a pipe organ, harpsichord, clavichord, electronic organ, melodica, or synthesizer. The term "manual" is used with regard to any hand keyboard on these instruments to distinguish it from the pedalboard, which is a keyboard that the organist plays with their feet. It is proper to use "manual" rather than "keyboard", then, when referring to the hand keyboards on any instrument that has a pedalboard.
The scale length of a string instrument is the maximum vibrating length of the strings that produce sound, and determines the range of tones that string can produce at a given tension. It is also called string length. On instruments in which strings are not "stopped" or divided in length, it is the actual length of string between the nut and the bridge.
The pedal piano is a kind of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ.
Sohmer & Co. was a piano manufacturing company founded in New York City in 1872. Sohmer & Co. marketed the first modern baby grand piano, and also manufactured pianos with aliquot stringing and bridge agraffes, as well as Cecilian "all-inside" player pianos and Welte-Mignon-Licensee reproducing pianos. Sohmer pianos were owned by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, and composers Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin. Sohmer is now a line of pianos manufactured by Samick Music Corporation in Korea.
Piano pedals are foot-operated levers at the base of a piano that change the instrument's sound in various ways. Modern pianos usually have three pedals, from left to right, the soft pedal, the sostenuto pedal, and the sustaining pedal. Some pianos omit the sostenuto pedal, or have a middle pedal with a different purpose such as a muting function also known as silent piano.
The Bösendorfer Model 290 Imperial, or Imperial Bösendorfer (also colloquially known as the 290) is the largest model and flagship piano manufactured by Bösendorfer, at around 290 cm (9 ft 6 in) long, 176 cm (5 ft 9 in) wide, and weighing 552 kg (1,217 lb). It has an eight-octave range from C0 to C8. For 90 years it was the only concert grand piano in the world with 97 keys, until it was joined in 1990 by the instruments of Stuart & Sons of Australia. Music critic Melinda Bargreen has described the Imperial as the ne plus ultra of pianos, while pianist Garrick Ohlsson dubbed it the "Rolls-Royce of pianos".
Cross-stringing is a method of arranging piano strings inside the case of a piano so that the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. The invention of cross-stringing in the 1820s is variously credited to Alpheus Babcock and Jean-Henri Pape. The first patented use in grand pianos in the United States was by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859. In the late 19th century, cross-stringing gradually took the place of straight-stringing, in which all the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard and do not overlap.
D-274 is the model name of a concert grand piano, the flagship of the Steinway & Sons piano company, first built in 1884. It is generally described as the first choice of most concert pianists. As of 2017 a D-274 finished in Polished Ebony has a MSRP of US$175,700.
Louis-Constantin Boisselot was a French piano manufacturer and the great artisan of the creation of the house of Boisselot in Marseille.
References
Much of the above information is taken from The Piano Book by Larry Fine (4th edition 2001; Jamaica Plain, MA: Brookside Press; ISBN1-929145-01-2), which contains a comprehensive survey of contemporary pianos.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
